In order to fully appreciate the importance of court records
for genealogical research, we need to understand the significance of law and the
courts in the daily lives of the colonists in early America. Browsing through
the new books at my neighborhood library, I came across The Notorious Elizabeth Tuttleby Ava Chamberlain, a scholarly
study of how historians have mischaracterized Elizabeth Tuttle, the paternal
grandmother of the great Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

Used by permission of author

Although
Professor Chamberlain wrote this book to uncover the true character of
Elizabeth Tuttle, she also gives genealogists a great lesson in how to use
court records to study ancestors.

In addition to modeling the use of civil and criminal court
records to glean information about people who often didn’t leave other records,
Chamberlain also demonstrates another genealogical lesson: “Because Elizabeth
Tuttle’s story cannot be told directly, we must adopt an indirect approach.”1 This means using the records of collateral persons and families, the
written trail of those people close to Elizabeth whose actions can give us a
glimpse into her life. I love Professor
Chamberlain’s turn of phrase to describe how she will tell the story of
Elizabeth Tuttle’s divorce by “teasing it out from the historical records.” 2

Why are court records so important a resource in studying
colonial era ancestors?

In seventeenth century colonial America, the courts played a
large part in people’s lives, according to Chamberlain:

“Most colonists, both male and female, appeared in court at
various moments of their lives….”3

Chamberlain footnoted the above quote which led me to
another study of the role of the court in colonial times: Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticutby Bruce H. Mann, Professor of Law at Harvard. Checking notes and bibliographies in the books we consult as genealogists is
another very important part of research which can lead to information we might
never have discovered otherwise.

Used by permission of author

Mann tells us that the main reason people went to court in colonial times was to settle debts. As we are aware today, when people go to court, they often come away with bad feelings about each other. In colonial times, society was quite different from today; it was much more insular so the disharmony caused by law suits was more of a threat to the community than it is today.

In order to understand the role of the court in the
seventeenth century, Mann reminds us that we need to remember an important
aspect of colonial society. People lived in very small communities, generally
of about 100 families. The insularity that resulted from small groups living
together resulted in people interacting with each other in many different ways,
having “multilayered relationships”:

“Debtors and creditors did not, indeed could not, limit
their relations to single transactions. They might also be neighbors,
relatives, fellow church members, companions in the local militia company,
suppliers of goods and services that each needed, rivals for the affection of
the same widow, parents whose children had quarreled or whose livestock had
eaten each other’s grain. In short, they were people whose course of dealing
with one another stretched across time as well as across several roles.” 4

As we can see from the description above of the reasons
people took each other to court, we have a strong indication of what types of
records we might find in courthouse files. The records reflect people’s daily
lives and go way beyond the catalog of “facts” that we read in birth, marriage
and death records.

What kinds of court records did Chamberlain come across in
her effort to reveal Elizabeth Tuttle’s true story? The most telling records
were the divorce petitions, and there were several including appeals, that
Richard Edwards, Elizabeth’s husband, brought against her. And much earlier in
their marriage, Richard had brought a petition of paternity against his new
bride.

We have seen that one function of the court in colonial
times was to give people a place to air their differences without threatening
communal bonds. The judges and the selectmen were the arbiters. But how did
early Americans feel about the law?

Hoffer discusses how the colonists’ attitude toward the law developed and how
they used the courts:

“Throughout their colonial and revolutionary experience,
Americans developed a passion for law, a legalism that pervaded social,
economic, and political relationships. They laid their disputes with one
another before the courts of law to an extent exceeding all other peoples. The
colonists believed in the possibilities of a lawful world, and their demands
for legal redress grew from and sustained this faith.” 5

Hoffer underscores again the function of the court as a
means of preserving harmony in the small, isolated, frontier communities where
everyone depended on one another:

“Law kept families together with ties of property and
obligation. People went to court to reintegrate themselves into towns,
parishes, and colonial life. Courts were places of signification. They helped
people decide what was important to them.” 6

The quote above explains clearly why genealogists need to
look at court records if they want to build a more complete picture of their
early American ancestors’ lives.

Although the law and the court featured largely in the lives
of the colonists and served as a means of diffusing friction, it cannot be said
that all members of colonial society were treated equally in the court system,
as Hoffer makes clear:

“…early American law gave some people and some ways of
behaving advantages over others. It forbade certain activities, defining the
margins of acceptable deviation from normal or customary conduct. It intruded
itself into people’s lives, demanding that they honor commitments, pay debts,
serve church and county, and accept pain, shame, and punishment for their
crimes. Local magnates, sitting as justices of the peace and on vestries or
councils of elders, demanded deference and used law to reinforce their demands.
The playing field was by no means level.” 7

Colonial kitchen with woman spinning, an engraving,
1885, A Brief History of the United States by Joel Dorman Steele and
Esther Baker Steele, 1885, wikimedia, public domain.

This brings us back to Elizabeth Tuttle and why Chamberlain
wrote a book about her life. Women, indentured servants, children, slaves and
other marginalized people were often treated harshly under the law; they had no
voice and so rarely do we hear or even know their side of any story.

We are
fortunate that through Professor Chamberlain’s research, Elizabeth Tuttle’s
good name and reputation have been restored.

With this new knowledge of the colonial courthouse as a kind
of theater where our ancestors played out many significant happenings in their
lives, I look forward to looking for records left my Allis ancestors who lived
in colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut.

About Me

My first ten years were spent in Chicago, IL and the next ten in Tucson, Arizona. In 1967, I graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in secondary education. I taught English in San Francisco public schools for twenty four years. Then I re-invented myself as a grants manager and held a variety of positions in local and state governmental agencies, colleges and universities in California and North Carolina. In 2003 I completed a Master's degree in Public Administration at San Francisco State University. Now I am retired and doing genealogy full time.